Functional and pragmatic aspects in the study of the text

Recognizing the objective need for multidimensional study of the text, you can still highlight the main aspects related to the characteristics of the text as a whole literary work, as a dynamic communicative unit of the highest level. Understanding the text as “text in action” leads to highlighting its functional aspect, and the text's orientation to the communicative process, moreover, focuses attention on the pragmatics of the text.

Functional analysis involves taking into account the preliminary conditionality of the author’s choice of certain means of expressing the semantic structure of the text by its species and genre purpose setting. At the same time, the choice of the type and genre of the text is dictated by the conditions of real communication (communicators, subject of communication, means of communication, etc.). Thus, functional analysis takes into account extra- and intratextual features.

Functional analysis also means that the individual components of the text are considered in terms of their role in the organization of the whole text. Consequently, functional analysis helps to reveal the actual content qualities of the text. The fact is that the linguistic signs in the text specify their meaning, being correlated with other linguistic signs, they enter into special relations peculiar to the given text; One of the possible meanings of a word is actualized, for example, or the word changes its meaning altogether under the influence of context (contextual synonyms appear that are not marked in the dictionary order).

The functional analysis takes into account the author's attitude to the reported, the author's intention (intention), etc.

What does the functional analysis give?

1. Functional analysis allows you to go beyond the actual linguistic characteristics of the text and go to the analysis of conceptual categories, such as “space” and “time” (cf. artistic space, artistic time). Functional analysis reveals the significance of these categories in the text.

2. Functional analysis helps to uncover the relationship between the meaning of language units and their meaning in the text. The distinction between the concepts of “meaning” and “meaning” when analyzing a text is very significant, since it leads to its meaningful characteristics. This is revealed even at the level of a single word. The value objectively reflects the system of connections and relationships in a word; it is a stable system, the same for all people [1]. By meaning is meant an individual understanding of the meaning of a word, separated from an objective system of connections, but related only to a given moment and to a given situation. Therefore, the “meaning” is the introduction of subjective aspects of meaning, the manifestation of the affective state of the subject [2]. A.R. Luria in the book "Language and Consciousness" gives such an example to distinguish meaning and meaning in a word: the objective meaning of the word "coal" is a black piece of wood origin, the result of burning trees, which has a certain chemical composition, based on the element C (carbon) . But the meaning of this word may be different for different people in different situations: for the hostess, coal is what the stove is kindled with; for the scientist - the subject of study; for the artist - a tool that can draw a sketch; for a girl who has soiled her dress, this is the dirt that caused her displeasure.

It is clear that such values ​​usually appear in the text, subjective - corresponding to the given moment and the given situation.

3. Functional analysis makes it possible to reconstruct texts, to establish their authorship. For example, to reconstruct ancient texts. (However, it is believed that adequate reconstruction is impossible, since ignorance of the cultural and historical assessments of the era makes it difficult to interpret the text.)

4. Functional analysis can link texts of different eras, multilingual texts.

The latter is especially important in the analysis of translated texts, when the question arises about the equivalence of words and their combinations in different languages. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the socio-cultural aspect of the analysis of speech units of the text, since the language reflects the culture of the speaking team. And the same realities and concepts expressed in the word can be perceived differently by carriers of different cultures. For example, communication (in this case, text perception) can complicate the “conflict between cultural ideas”: in particular, Russian green eyes are perceived as something romantic, mermaid, and English green eyes are a metaphor of envy [3].

5. Finally, functional analysis is able to reveal the essence of text overlap (text in text), the significance of this phenomenon, explain the meaning of associations of these texts, their combinations, creating additional meanings (cf. literary reminiscences, allusions, direct quoting; different kinds of text interpretation for example, the biblical story about Christ by M. Bulgakov and C. Aitmatov). Functional analysis explains how this complicates and simultaneously clarifies the basic meaning of the work.

Pragmatic analysis of the text derives from the functional, logically continues and develops it. Grech, pragmatos (deed, action) - the field of science (semiotics, linguistics), in which the functioning of linguistic signs in speech is studied. Linguistic pragmatics includes issues related to the subject (the author of the text), the addressee (reader), and - most importantly - their interaction in the act of communication.

The subject of speech (author of the text) defines:

1) the goals and objectives of the message (eg, informing, expressing will, instructing, etc.);

2) the type of speech behavior;

3) attitude to the reported, its assessment (or lack thereof);

4) accents in the design of the message text.

Speech addressee (text reader):

1) interprets the text, including indirect and hidden meanings,

2) is experiencing an impact - intellectual, emotional, aesthetic.

Pragmatic analysis reveals these interactions of the author and the reader, sets a measure of useful information in the text, focusing on the typology of the reader's address.

Pragmatic analysis underlies the theory of discourse [4]. Discourse (from French discours - speech) is currently considered to be a coherent text in conjunction with extralinguistic factors - psychological, sociocultural, etc. Discourse is a text taken in an eventual aspect as a socially directed “action”. Metaphorically, discourse is speech immersed in life. Therefore, the term “discourse” is currently incorrect in its application to ancient texts, since the discourse is entirely directed towards a pragmatic situation.

The tendency to delimit the terms "text" and "discourse" began in the 70-80s. Under the discourse began to understand different types of actualization of texts in connection with extralinguistic indicators.

The distinction between the concepts of “discourse” and “text” is based on the opposition of the process of speech activity and its result. Discourse is understood precisely as a process associated with real speech production, while the text is associated with the result of this process [5]. In addition, the distinction can be defined and forms of speech: the term "discourse" is often used to works of oral speech, and the term "text" - to the works of written speech. “Discourse” in Western terminology can mean any speech at all.